


the survivors

by ElasticElla



Series: the monster is time [3]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Angst, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-11
Updated: 2015-09-11
Packaged: 2018-04-20 07:07:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4778105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElasticElla/pseuds/ElasticElla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I’m sorry I’m not strong enough,” Kira whispers from the doorway, and Scott isn’t quite awake enough to put two and five together, and she’s gone by the time he’s extracted himself from Malia’s sleeping form without waking her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the survivors

**Author's Note:**

> first posted [here](http://elasticella.tumblr.com/post/128751278990/maliakirascott-things-you-said-when-you), a piece of the [scira reincarnation crying party](http://elasticella.tumblr.com/tagged/scira-reincarnation-crying-party), a verse with immortal!kira and reincarnating!scott

“I’m sorry I’m not strong enough,” Kira whispers from the doorway, and Scott isn’t quite awake enough to put two and five together, and she’s gone by the time he’s extracted himself from Malia’s sleeping form without waking her. (He didn’t realize she was really going, or he would have deliberately woken her, the two of them could have gotten her to stay.)

Kira hadn’t thought much about her longevity until a month ago, when her Dad died. Noshiko had mourned him with her, but she wasn’t surprised or outraged at his early death, she was resigned.

“We are the survivors Kira, we will always live on.”

The words didn’t soothe, still don’t, she can’t imagine losing each of her friends or the rest of the family on Dad’s side. She needs a clean break, needs to learn how to stop feeling- or how to moderate it at the very least. It doesn’t matter that werewolves and werecoyotes live for a long time, two hundred years will be nothing compared to eternity.

Kira can’t survive an infinity of losing people over and over, forever in mourning. She isn’t strong enough, has too much of her father’s compassion and too little of her mother’s steel.  

She goes to Seoul first, spends a decade refining her father’s language. Every word drips off her lips like an apology, and Noshiko comes to visit sometimes. The more years that pass, the more her name seems to suit her before Mom.

“You still aren’t at peace,” her mother says, sadly but unsurprised. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“I’m going away for a little while,” Kira says, “I’ll find you after.”

“I’ll always be here for you,” she says, hugging her tightly.

(At night, she remembers the promise, and it repeats like a twisted premonition.)

Kira spends the next decade and a half holed up in a tiny apartment in Jamaica. It’s the closest she’s been to the states since, and her fox feels more content, she sleeps more soundly. She could have stayed forever, selling overpriced photographs and candids to tourists. She lets her guard down, makes a few too many friends. There’s an island hopping cruise ship they all convince her to join them on, Kavin and Jamar especially adamant. A weekend playing stowaway with all the rich usamerican kids. (There’s a lump in her throat, once she could have- but she isn’t.)

Kira spots them first, freezing and disbelieving her eyes. For a split second she almost goes up to them, plays it all out in her head, the surprised laughter and smiles and hugs. Malia and Scott are holding hands and gazing out at the sunset, and apologizing to her new friends- she runs. (She’s gotten better at doing it without feeling guilty.)

She packs up her whole apartment in three rushed hours, has a ferry and then a flight to far, far away. They’re happy and that’s what matters, but she keeps re-seeing their clasped hands and their rings. Hot tears tainted with jealousy slip down her face, and Kira goes to sleep as if waking in a new place will fix her.

Kira wanders for five years, picking new names and personalities at random. She settles at the base of Mount Everest, a new challenge in mind.

(It won’t kill her, but the first time she climbs up, she still thinks it might- barely able to breathe and her fox urging her to run down the mountain.)

She avoids all the locals, and all the climbers. Dressed in all white, she climbs the mountain over and over retrieving long frozen bodies and empty oxygen canisters. Everything is piled at the base of the mountain, and the accumulation actually stops some of the thrill seekers from the climb. (Once the bodies start showing up, relatives come in from over the world, taking bodies home to bury, finally thawed.)

It isn’t exactly penance, but Kira tries not to think about what it is. Once she was curious about demons and death, and then her life was flooded with both, but none for her, never for her. She misses that innocent child, who loved photographs and lacrosse and Sc-

An avalanche saves her from having to finish the thought, or to taste the blood in the back of her throat. She sleeps in the snow for a week before bitter winds reawaken her, and she goes back to work.

Three years, and the mountain is clear.

(Three more years and the climbers are back, the Death Zone regrown.)

Kira spends the next dozen years hopping around the Philippines, soaking up the sun and life. There’s ice deep in her bones, and even a couple hundred books read on sunny perfect beaches don’t get it all out.

There’s a young girl, beautiful and bright. She introduces herself, says her name is Malia, and Kira chokes out a hello.

(She’s gone the next day, Brazil this time, still warm and far from here. It only lasts two years, there’s an itch under her skin, she’s too close to California.)

Kira refuses to google them until she’s further away, sipping hot chocolate in Rome. Malia’s facebook page comes up first, still open to the public- Scott’s is set to friends only as before. They’re older now- she knew it objectively, but their faces with laugh lines, and pictures with two kids are still a surprise. Kira goes through all of Malia’s albums, eating up details of the last half century.

Scott has his own veterinary, and Malia became a social worker, helping kids. She had even gone on Jeopardy, and Kira made a mental note to find a tape of it, lasting a week and making enough for the kids’ college funds to be set at the age of eight and eleven. (They were adopted together the year before, Julia and Katerina, close friends at the group home.) Kira gets to the wedding photos and she can’t continue.

She goes back to her homepage, typing in her old email instead. There are thousands of unread messages- zoya is still sending her nail polish coupons, and amazon is having a weekend sale. Clicking open a recent one from Scott before she can chicken out, she reads:

_Kira,  
_ _You can always come back, we love you._

Her heart jumps, and tears slide heavily down her face. After all this time- she doesn’t deserve- her throat is closing up, tight and dry-

Kira’s packing, running because it doesn’t require thought anymore. It’s automatic.

She’s in the airport, still amidst the chaos, staring up at the boards. There’s a flight to Sacramento, only stopping in Boston for an hour.

She could be there in eighteen hours, not even a day.

The girl at the counter looks like the pictures of Katerina, and Kira buys a ticket to Mumbai instead.

.

She doesn’t open the old email again for another fifty years. Only when Noshiko is on her doorstep in Tokyo, with news of a car accident half a world away. Malia, Scott, and Katerina all dead.

(The emails read like a diary of sorts, as more time goes on, Scott seems to be talking to her less. Malia’s are always short and poignant, usually a sentence or photo.)

Her soul is chilled, and she flies back, forgetting half her belongings- she needs to see, to be _sure_. It had to be a mistake, Scott had died three times before and Malia was too tough for a simple accident to hurt her. It couldn’t be- it was too normal, it had to be a lie.

(There’s a half cooked fantasy in her mind that it’s all just to get her back, and she should have come back sooner.)

Kira doesn’t cry until she sees their graves. Not until she’s screamed herself hoarse, begging, pleading on her knees before them. She offers up her immortality, her anything- but the world is quiet, a cruelly nice day.

She goes to their house, the McCall house still after all this time. It smells like them, and she weeps anew. She could have been here the whole time, she could have-

“Are you Kira?”

Julia’s prettier than her pictures, and her eyes glow with her father’s red.

“I am.”

The girl looks at her, as purely hateful as only a young teenager can. “Why didn’t you save them?”

“I thought I was.”

“No. You didn’t.”

And Kira wept.

.

They come to an uneasy truce, living together in the home that still feels of them. It takes a few months before pillows smelling of Malia and Scott’s favorite movies stop making her cry. They’re at every turn, and it’s hard sometimes to remember that they aren’t here.

She asks Julia if she wants her to stay, and the girl crosses her arms tight. “If you can handle not running.”

She can, she needs to, and it only takes a year to earn the girl’s trust.

Julia looks at her over breakfast one crisp September morning, algebra homework next to her waffles. “So do you never age?”

It’s the first real question she’s asked about Kira, and it takes her by surprise. “I don’t think so.”

“Huh, weird.”

Kira smiles wide, sipping her oj. “Your bus will be here in a few minutes.”

“Yes  _mom_ ,” Julia jokes, and her heart catches.

She doesn’t have a response, but the little werewolf is already out the door, homework in hand.

.

They bring fresh flowers to their graves most weekends, and Kira’s begun her own garden in the backyard. It reminds her of Everest, only warm and less lonely.

On Katerina’s birthday, it’s a Saturday and Kira has the mix of white and pink roses waiting. Julia doesn’t come down, and Kira knocks on her door quietly, causing it to swing open.

“Hey,” she says softly, seeing her curled up in bed. “do you wanna talk about it?”

Julia sniffs loudly, and then nods her head, and Kira comes closer.

She looks up at her, eyes red, and asks, “How do you deal with it? With being a survivor?”

Kira exhales, wiping her face, “I’m probably not the best person to ask.”

Julia laughs, a bitter small laugh, “Yeah, I guess not.”

“But my mom is, do you want to meet her?”

Julia nods, arms tight around her middle, “Sure. Thanks.”

.

Julia grows old too fast, but this time Kira doesn’t run. She’s there when Julia turns eighteen and begins her own pack- wolves, coyotes, even a banshee, all traveling to join Scott McCall’s daughter’s pack.

The emissaries rule her a True Alpha after examination, declaring she couldn’t have inherited his power otherwise, it would have merely faded. And so, Julia Tate-McCall becomes the most spoken of Alpha since her father.

It’s easier this time, with Kira guarding her and the nemeton no longer attracting the supernatural. It’s harder this time, when Julia is two hundred and eighteen, and Kira can’t guard her from death any longer.

Her grave is beside Katerina’s, and Kira’s garden flourishes. (She doesn’t care that the townspeople have grown suspicious of her, lives almost entirely in the McCall-Tate house and the graveyard.)

Noshiko tells her she has to move on, needs to do  _something_  besides grow flowers and mourn.

Kira knows she’s right, but it’s not the time- not yet.

.

Kira stops counting the years, stops counting her regrets. She can’t do this forever, she always knew she couldn’t.

She’s sitting in front of their graves when  _he_  finds her.

Kira can’t believe it, but he feels, smells, sounds the same, even if his body is new, his memories are old.

“Kira, you came back,” Scott says, and she’s crying again, uncontrollable.

“I’m so sorry, Scott, I wish-”

“Shh, I’m here,” he says, and they hug, too tight for breath.

“Can I take you home?” he asks with a coy smile. “I love what you did with the garden.”

“Of course,” Kira says, and they walk back, arm in arm trading stories of Malia and Katerina and Julia.

(They wait, they pray, they wish on every star, but Malia is never reborn.)

(Kira never really forgives herself for leaving.)


End file.
